


Finding Shadows

by kayura_sanada



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 04:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12833697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: Clark Kent had the mark of a bat on his chest.





	Finding Shadows

He read the papers. Hell, he wrote articles in them. So he was one of the first in Metropolis to hear about the new vigilante going by the name of Batman.

The moment he’d heard, he’d reached up to the mark on his chest, where a perfect artist’s rendition of a bat sat with wings unfurled. He tapped mindlessly at it as he read the paper, then again as Lois spoke with a group of their peers about the possible meaning of two high-exposure vigilantes showed up in two major cities at around the same time. “Clark?” she asked, pulling him from his near-stupor. “What do you think?”

He had to think back to recall just what it was she’d been talking about. “I don’t know that there’s any link between the two of them,” he said. “The link may instead be to the rate of crime, and the power of the criminal class. The rise of vigilantes may just be another effect of the same cause.”

She pursed her lips. “True,” she said, and turned back to the others. He looked back down to the paper and its small message. Gotham had seen so much darkness in the past years, it was no surprise that someone had decided to take the law into their own hands. And he certainly knew Superman had no link to this person – well. No _known_ link. Not even to Superman himself.

He tapped at his chest. It had always been a source of wonder for him; apparently his body had normalized to the idea of being an Earthling, at least enough to create the picture-perfect rendition of a bat. Most soulmate markings were stylized, no more than black or red or blue lines, more like a tribal drawing than anything else. His parents had been surprised to see anything pop up on him; it had been a great concern of theirs, the idea that he wouldn’t have any sort of marking at all. Perhaps, they’d said, it was normal all across the galaxy, and the pictures on people differed from race to race. Either way, he’d ended up with a Terran bat – specifically an American vesper bat. From what he’d learned through his own research, several species were known to reside around northeast America. Around Metropolis.

Around Gotham.

He snapped the newspaper closed and stood. “In any case, someone should look into it and see if there’s a story.” Lois cocked an eyebrow at him. He tried to give her an easy smile, as if he wasn’t thrumming in anticipation. As if he didn’t feel like he _had_ to go. “If you want, you can take him. But you’ve been so interested in catching up with Superman, I thought you’d rather have his story than this Batman’s.”

Her lips thinned again. He fixed his glasses. She sighed. “All right. You can have him. It might turn out to be a bust, anyway.”

He nodded. Inwardly, however, he disagreed. If there was anyone who had a chance to find this “shadow of the night,” it was Superman.

* * *

He may have been slightly overestimating himself. The Batman was more a rumor than anything else; no one even truly believed him to be real. During the morning and afternoons, he would search people out on the street to try to find out anything. He’d gone to the police, only to get vague news of bound thugs and anonymous messages of where to hit when, but otherwise, none had apparently seen the Batman – though Gordon seemed a bit tetchy on the subject, and Clark had to wonder if the man wasn’t protecting Batman somehow. Most of Gotham treated the news of the vigilante the same way much of Metropolis had treated him in the beginning – as something to shoot first and worry about later. Those who didn’t, he found, thought of him as some sort of avenging angel.

Around midday, he would search the newspaper reels for anything he might have missed. Turned out there had been several stories about the Batman before anyone knew it was the Batman. Countless stories of villains being dropped off in front of the police station, or left in front of alleyways, or knocked out on the back streets of Gotham. Eyewitness reports of a “man in black” rescuing them from muggings, robberies, assaults. Reports by villains of a “flying nutjob” cornering them as they made drug deals or attempted to sell weapons. He went through months of backstory in those first couple of days, and managed to appease his boss with an article that referenced these accounts.

But when it came to actually finding the man, he came up short. Over and over again.

He figured out quickly that the man operated at night, and he forewent sleep for the first couple of nights in order to try tracking the man down. Gotham, however, was not his first home, and he wasn’t as familiar with its twists and turns as this Batman – someone who must have been raised in the city, for him to know it so well. That, however, still left countless people to consider.

His third night in Gotham, he kept himself to the shadows of an alleyway, his eyesight pressed to its limits to search for any and all signs of life. From most of the eyewitness accounts, the Batman had arrived from the sky – from the top of a building, or from its ramparts. But though he searched every night, he found too many people out, even past midnight, and far too many places where a single person or small group of persons ended up being those the Batman was trying to stop. With him refusing to put on his flashy Superman costume, he wasn’t able to mete out justice the way he would have preferred. Instead he hid a block or two down and sent anonymous tips to the cops, then skirted away to continue his own hunt.

He was about to turn in when he saw someone standing alone on a building merely five blocks down. They were difficult to make out, only there because he could see a plethora of small explosive items packed up within the crouched form of their body. He couldn’t hear anything odd coming from that area, no screams or shouts or laughter. Yet, as with every other small, insignificant chance, he took it, anyway. He only had to go down three of those five blocks before the person moved.

For an instant, he thought the person was turning away from him. But then they swooped around – _swooped_ around – and headed back toward him. For an instant, his heart fluttered wildly in his chest. Could the Batman fly? He looked up as the figure landed on a building just overtop him.

“Why are you following me?” the man asked, and Clark blinked.

He hadn’t thought he was close to the Batman at all. Yet, apparently, the reason he’d thought he’d been failing had been because, somehow, this man had known he was being hunted and had stayed one step ahead of Clark. For three days, the man had known. Had he been watching Clark as he fumbled around these back alleys, struggled to find even a trace of this man? What had he been thinking as he’d watched Clark’s sad attempts?

Clark grinned. This man was incredible, wasn’t he?

Without bothering with any level of formality, he reached down and tugged off his shirt. With his thumb, he pointed to the symbol on his chest. “I thought this might be referring to you.”

The man stood hunched onthe top of the roof for what felt like several minutes. His entire form was black, likely to help him hide in the shadows as he hunted. The eyes behind his cowl, however, looked almost luminescent. They stared unblinking until, finally, the man spoke again. His voice, this time, seemed almost raw. “Is that your soul mark? Are you really showing that to a stranger?”

Clark shrugged. “Why not? It seems to make sense. There aren’t that many people that I know of that are represented by a bat.” He looked the man up and down. The cowl with pointed ears, the cape with that specific cut at the end. “Not like you.”

The man stood. He was tall. Muscled. Even beneath that tight, black armor, Clark could see the dark ripple of muscles along his thighs and arms. His mouth went dry. “That would make you Superman, then.” At Clark’s jolt of surprise, the Batman harrumphed. “You aren’t the only one with a definitive marking.”

Did that mean this man sported a symbol as detailed as Clark’s? Or was it something that clearly marked Superman as his soulmate? No, that one had to be it, or else how would he have known? And it made sense, didn’t it? Because Clark wasn’t Clark. He was an alien, not human, and inside, he knew that very well.

Batman swooped down. ( _Swooped_ again.) His cape flared out behind him, and those cuts at the edge looked distinctly bat-like. He cut an imposing figure as he glided, his feet catching easily as he came to a stop. He stood almost to Clark’s own height, only perhaps an inch difference between them. He looked… imposing wasn’t quite the word, but it was certainly correct. _Stunning_ might have been better. The cowl hid those eyes until they were little more than gleams in the darkness, but Clark’s enhanced vision caught the long lashes that framed them. In this dark alley, he couldn’t be certain of the color, but he knew it was light, like his own – green, perhaps, or blue. And those lips.

“You didn’t come looking for me,” Clark said, watching the man stalk up to him with a heart beating far too fast. Energy thrummed through him. The marking on his chest almost seemed to burn. If the stories were true, the Batman would be feeling the same sizzling sensation. If they laid hands on one another’s marks, they would know for sure. And make the first tenuous bond between them.

“I don’t know if you’re someone worth looking for or not,” the Batman said, and Clark was surprised. He shouldn’t have been. All the stories he’d found that referenced this man made his sound shady, but his actions spoke louder than that. Broken arms and legs at times, men scared out of their minds. But there hadn’t been a single casualty, and every wound had been recoverable after, at most, a stay in the hospital. He used fear to garner control, unlike Clark, who flashed his power as a deterrent. But it seemed like the man had a very similar goal to his own.

“You don’t trust me, then,” Clark said. He was all right with that.

“Your power.” The Batman’s eyes narrowed. “I have a feeling you’ve only shown a fraction of it.”

He shivered. This man was perceptive. “If I gave you a way to defeat me, would you consider getting to know each other better tonight?”

The man looked him up and down. “You’re not exactly dressed for the occasion,” he said, and Clark could detect the faintest hint of curiosity in that deep voice. He grinned.

“That won’t be a problem.”


End file.
